


I Didn't Mean to Wake You (I Didn't Mean to Fall)

by CupcakeGumdrop3



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Comfort, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heaven, Hell, Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Nightmares, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 10:27:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20562782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CupcakeGumdrop3/pseuds/CupcakeGumdrop3
Summary: "Rivers flowed from my eyes and carved out mountains beneath me.But She was unrelenting.And I was unforgiven."With the all of the stress of impending Armageddon, it's no wonder Crowley is having nightmares about his million light year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulfur.  They've dodged a war for now, but the air is ominously still, the calm before a storm.  The book shop has burned down, and Aziraphale is staying with Crowley for the night.  Aziraphale hears distress coming from Crowley's room and rushes down the hall to wake his sleeping friend as he screams into the darkness.





	I Didn't Mean to Wake You (I Didn't Mean to Fall)

**Author's Note:**

> I love these boys. 
> 
> One thousand chef’s kisses to them both.
> 
> (Also, keep in mind that Aziraphale said he can feel 'love', so he's well aware of how Crowley is feeling, wink wink)

~~I used to get teased for being soft.

~~Not soft in the middle, the way Aziraphale was often teased for by that dickhead Gabriel.

~~But a different kind of soft: one that made the other angels and demons question me, second guess me, even undermine me. 

~~God asked for volunteers to help build the universe and I took to the stars. 

~~I made beautiful things:constellations, asteroids, I even threw in a few black holes as a practical joke, because it thought it would be funny to watch some do-gooder dweeb get too close and get sucked in — which did happen, by the way, but don’t worry, Gabriel was fine.

~~I was part of a team, yet I _still_ didn’t fit in.I was one of millions of angels, collecting dust and converting it to light, yet I had never felt so alone as I did in the deep vacuum of space. 

~~It was on one of those particularly lonely nights that I dreamt up a binary star that was so bright it actually outshone Gabriel and his stupid Sirius concoction. Of course, that only lasted for about 30 seconds, before he nearly blinded himself making sure that _his _was still the brightest star in the night sky.

~~Whatever, he can have that stupid victory, for mine was the most beautiful. 

~~Alpha Centauri: a two-star system, that when looked at with the naked eye, appeared as only one star. Two become one. I thought it was quite romantic, and I was so pleased with the final result that I didn’t even care that it’s brightness came third to Gabriel’s Sirius, or Michael’s Canopous, the fucking teacher’s pets… 

~~I thought it was my little star’s imperfections that made it all the more beautiful. And it was. 

~~I sent my finished draft to the Big Woman upstairs, and She finalized the building of it. 

~~By the time my masterpiece was complete, there were better, bigger things in the sky: things like planets and moons, bigger constellations than I could ever dream of, and two much brighter stars than mine, courtesy of The Eggheads. 

~~But I loved my star. I would remember that, when everything else had been taken from me. 

~~All of a sudden I was somewhere else. The night was dark, the stars shone bright, and they were all the way up high in the sky. I realized I was on Earth, in the middle of a what was essentially a construction zone.

~~I was just admiring ‘plants’, a fairly new invention by a fairly young angel, when my eye was drawn to a pack of idiots, laughing boisterously and strolling by without a care in the world. 

~~“Hello, [……],” Beelzebub sneered, “had a lovely time playing with dust in the sky there, did you?” 

~~Lucifer and the guys let out a cackling roar. 

~~It wasn’t that Beelzebub hadn’t said my name, just that I can’t remember what it was anymore…

~~Before… 

~~“What’d you make,” I sneered right back, hoping it came off as cool and unaffected, rather than defensive and childish.Beelz was always snarling in a way that irritated me to no end.It didn’t matter that he was of high ranking in Hell, he was still a prick, they all were.I didn’t know why I felt the need to impress them, but I did, so I smiled cooly, cocked an eyebrow, and crossed my arms, awaiting an answer.

~~“Bugs, insects. Gross things.” Beelzebub snarled nastily, with all of the defensive childishness I was aiming to avoid. “Nothing that sparkles I can assure you of that.”

~~The crowd roared with laughter again. 

~~“Alright, enough picking on [……]” Lucifer drawled, hissing out my name as he slithered up next to me and draped a gigantic arm around my skinny shoulder. “I actually quite like what you’ve made,” he assured me in a soothing voice, “it’s poetic. And one day poetry bring the world to madness and destruction.” 

~~ Lucifer was staring into my soul like he could see to the depths of me. I could practically feel his aura snaking its way inside of me, slithering up my being and pushing pieces of me out of the way to make room. “What are you doing later?” His sharp and crooked teeth shone behind a charming smile. 

~~The next thing I knew, She was_ furious_ with me. 

~~All I did was ask a question or two, all I did was not understand.I had only asked Her ‘why’, and She took it out on me. 

~~I pleaded, _begged _to be forgiven. I guess that’s something I can never be again. 

~~I was on my knees, weeping, _screaming,_ praying and _pleading_ with my heart calling out to the heavens, but there was no answer on the other side. 

~~Rivers flowed from my eyes and carved out mountains beneath me.

~~But She was unrelenting.

~~And I was unforgiven. 

~~I felt earth and soil smack against my shoulder as I was cast cast out of Her sight. And I was all alone. My voice gave out on me as I screamed, and it was like somebody had concealed me in a sound proof void; or simply taken my voice away. I had been silenced, shut out. I didn't care, I continued to wail and scream until I couldn't stand to anymore. It felt like I was being ripped into a million different pieces. I gazed up at the heavens, at the stars, and I said goodbye. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t mean to fall. 

~~I wept quietly as I peeled myself off of the ground. I swallowed every emotion when I caught sight of a demonic shadow in my midst.

~~“This is wonderful,” Lucifer sneered with a smile that stretched as wide as his face with teeth sharp and glistening with drool, “we need a Great Tempter…” 

~~I was now standing on the edge of the existence. A swirling pool of boiling sulfur lay at my feet, and the air around me was so thick and heavy, I could no longer keep my wings aloft, and I could barely hold my head up. I heard Lucifer sigh in relaxation, reveling in the gentle breeze that wafted the scent of sulfur and burning flesh all around us like it was a warm wind through a tropical garden.

~~“You will do great things once you take your new name.” He promised in my ear. 

~~I had literally nothing else to lose.

~~I looked back at the other demons, who refused to meet my eyes. All but one, Hastur — a new demon — who rubbed his arm as if in remembrance of pain, the experience obviously still fresh in his vivid memory. What, is this supposed to hurt or something? 

~~Lucifer gestured towards the steep incline and I looked into the void.It looked like a fairly nice stroll, if you ask me.A little bright.A little hot.Smelled funny. 

~~I cast one more longing glance towards the skies beneath the heavens. 

~~“Don’t look up there, [……], you don’t have a _choice.”_ Lucifer hissed in a booming voice, his breath roaring in hurricanes around us.

~~I knew that. I felt it. 

~~I stepped closer to the edge, so that my feet were balancing on my arches and my toes were hovering over oblivion. 

~~“You’re going to be so free.” He whispered tearfully against the shell of my ear, “You will become more powerful than you can _possibly_ imagine.”

~~“Yeah, ok.” I shrugged indifferently, not really as interested in the power aspect as I was intrigued at the idea of getting Michael and Gabriel off my back, permanently. And I had nothing else on for the rest of the afternoon. Plus, I had no choice. 

~~I felt a clawed hand grip around my shoulder one digit at a time, until I heard it sink into the flesh of my soul with a sickening pop.

~~“See you on the other side… _Crawley…”_

I felt myself jolt, but I did not awaken. 

~~What happened next happened fast; one minute I was sauntering vaguely downwards, and the next I was doing a million light year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulfur. 

~~The sensation was like a ripping and a burning simultaneously; physical pain, and the mental agony of knowing that everything you were and everything you can ever be again had forever been compromised, perverted, and tainted; it destroyed me, shredding me to pieces, then nothingness, leaving me irredeemable and unforgiven; Damned. My soul singed as my wings scorched, scaling over with a deep blistery black leather. It hurts. It hurts so much—

~~I didn’t want to follow blindly, but I also didn’t want this…

~~I didn’t mean to fall… 

“Crowley?”

~~I heard a voice in the distance but — wait… this voice wasn’t here before?

_“Crowley?”_

~~I could feel myself being shaken awake as the agony of screaming into a vat of acid incinerated every inch of my soul and burned me from the inside out.

“Crowley!”

I gasped as I was finally jolted awake, bolt upright in my bed in my very dark room.I panted, squinting into the darkness, just barely making out a vague shape in the blackness in front of me. 

I could still feel a tight grip around my shoulder. 

I jumped and swatted it away like it was a spider — how I _loathe_ spiders — still hazy in the twilight of a night terror.

“It’s ok! It's ok, it’s me!”A pleasingly familiar voice whispered hurriedly, before there was a snap in the darkness and a light beamed down from above to illuminate a wide-eyed, worried looking face. 

The face of an Angel. 

Aziraphale.

“Oh,” I sighed in relief and fell back against my pillow, covering my face with my hands as I tried to catch my breath despite my half-a-heartbeat pounding unevenly in my ears.

Sometimes inhabiting a human body was so much extra work… 

“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”I exhaled exhaustedly as I propped myself up on my elbow.

“You were screaming,” the anxious angel uttered gently, looking off to the side before quietly admitting, “it… _concerned_ me.”

I resisted the urge to reach up and smooth my thumbs across the worried lines stretched across the angel’s forehead. 

His wide eyes drifted back to me, slowly.

“I heard you all the way down the hall… I was worried something might be wrong…” He pouted slightly, having been dragged out of his own bed for seemingly nothing, worried for nothing. 

“Nothing’s wrong, Angel, just a bad dream is all.” I insisted.

“I didn’t know demons can dream.” Aziraphale noted plainly as he slid from his sitting position against the edge of my bed and knelt down next to me instead, his face mere inches from mine now.“Was it a nightmare?”

I’d considered lying to Aziraphale, insisting it was nothing and feigning stability until I could cry myself to sleep alone, in peace.I never got the chance.

“You were calling to Her…” Aziraphale admitted shakily.His hands slid a small distance across the bed towards me, but fell just short of me, folding over each other instead, right when I thought he would reach for me.“You said you were falling…”He whispered through a choked up voice, his eyes dancing with glistening tears under the faint illumination that was now flickering like candlelight.

I didn’t bother denying it.I also didn’t bother confirming.He already knew. 

I dropped my gaze to my own fidgeting hands, and folded them one over the other right next to Aziraphale’s. 

“I can never remember my name.”I blurted out somewhat off-topically.“Can you remember what my name was… before?”

Aziraphale shook his head, sadly, the beam of light above his head almost completely extinguished from lack of concentration.

“No, of course not,” I dismissed casually, “that was_… so _long ago… I don’t think we really knew each other back then, anyway.” I laughed half-heartedly.

“No, I… do believe we didn’t formally meet until the garden.”Aziraphale smiled stiffly. It looked strained pulling across his face that way. 

I nodded my head slowly, forcing a grim smile of my own before it grew completely dark in my room again. 

I just barely felt something brush up against my hand before I heard Aziraphale let out a shaky sigh and announce with cheery roboticism, “Well, I’ll let you get some sleep.”I heard his palms smack against his knees as he stood up, towering over the edge of my bed.“Goodnight, Crowley.”

He had turned to leave but I didn't let him go. 

My arm shot out in the darkness and grabbed a hold of his wrist tightly. 

Light glowed dimly above his head again as he turned to look down at my pale fingers gripped around him. I loosened my grip but kept my hold. Aziraphale looked at me quizzically, a quirk in his brow and a question on his lips.

I tugged his wrist towards me very gingerly. Aziraphale followed as if in a trance, taking a few stumbling steps towards me until he was back at the side of my bed, and I was no longer reaching for his hand across the darkness.

“Stay?”I offered in a gentle plea, startling even myself with my boldness and vulnerability. I was staring up at his big blue eyes, begging him not to decline. I squeezed my fingers around his limp arm, gently. I know he’s usually a flight risk, but this time I was praying for a miracle.

Aziraphale pursed his lips as he thought about it, no doubt concerning himself with what would or would not be considered proper for two hereditary enemies on the eve of the end of the world.

“Please.”I sighed, tracing my thumb back and forth above his wrist, feeling the raised bumps of human veins underneath.Aziraphale closed his eyes as the light dimmed back down to nothingness once again. I expected him to decline. I began to let go. 

“Ok.”I heard timidly in the darkness.

Ok. 

The bed creaked underneath us as I scooted myself to the other edge of my bed and Aziraphale crawled in behind me.I never fully let go of his wrist, pulling him towards me until his arm lay draped across me on the other side of my torso, and his body lay flush against my tense back. 

Aziraphale’s breath sighed warmly against the back of my neck as he readjusted himself more comfortably, closer to me, much to my surprise and rapidly pounding heart. He lay there, holding me stiffly for just a few moments before I regrettably felt him let go.

He shifted and I began to panic, blaming my unpredictable human heartbeat and its inability to keep a secret as I felt Aziraphale pull away from me momentarily.I willed myself to calm down in his rapidly chilling absence and prepared for rejection.When he came back to me, Aziraphale wrapped his bare arm around me tightly, having pulled himself out of just one sleeve of his button-up pajama shirt.I tilted my chin down to look at the pale arm draped around me, glowing gently in the darkness, soft with those downy hairs that humans seemed to be covered with, for whatever reason. 

Aziraphale tensed underneath my touch as I gave in to temptation and traced light fingertips across his bare forearm with a curious fascination. 

His arm lay right near mine, flesh to flesh, skin to skin, and I could swear that — under the subtle light of an angel's glow — l could just barely see myself again the way that I once was. Like a vivid, 6,000 year distant memory... 

Aziraphale's breath hitched and he lay his palm flat against my chest.I could feel warmth emanating from his pressed fingertips with devastating consolation.I almost wanted to cry.

“It’s ok,” I heard so quietly that I mostly only registered the consonants.I felt Angel lightly press against my chest with a comforting pressure, timidly at first, then with certainty, reminding me that he was _here,_ right over my human body’s heart.I pressed my palm against the back of his hand and curled my fingers around the side of his palm, as he repeated, “It’s ok.”

I began to fall asleep almost immediately, disturbed only by the whooshing sound of one white and pillow-soft wing popping out of Angel’s right shoulder blade, and curling around us protectively, cradling us safely in a holy shelter until we fell asleep. 


End file.
